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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25213792">Start by Doing Something Good</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyreader12/pseuds/crazyreader12'>crazyreader12</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>It Comes and Goes in Waves [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (2020 Movie)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(Multiple), Alternate six months later scene, Andy | Andromache (mentioned), Booker is trying to live, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Joe and Kicky (mentioned), Nile (mentioned), Quyhn is technically in this, Temporary Character Death, Unbeta'd, but she's either dead completely out of it or unconscious the whole time, somewhat AU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 04:48:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,700</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25213792</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyreader12/pseuds/crazyreader12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Booker knows what he's done, the depth of his betrayal. He can't fix it, but maybe he can bring Andy some peace of mind before her time comes by finding Quynh. He needs to become better, stop surviving, and start to live so that he never sinks that low ever again. Maybe he can do both at the same time. </p><p>(Instead of coming home to Quynh in his apartment six months into his exile, Booker goes looking for her himself.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>It Comes and Goes in Waves [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1905973</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>74</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>620</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Start by Doing Something Good</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Saw The Old Guard earlier today and caught feels. This is the result.</p><p>(I know nothing about deep sea fishing or diving, so just bear with me.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the end, it takes Booker six months to pull Quynh out of the ocean. Six months of trying not to drown in his own self-loathing or lose himself in the bottom of a bottle.</p><p>Six months of paying and/or threatening various ship captains with good sonar to do sweeps off the coast, making detailed notes on a map of everywhere she wasn't and when that failed, buying or stealing boats to do it himself. Six months alone.</p><p>Booker knows what he did. He knows that he deserves much worse than this, but he thinks that might actually hurt more. Alone, cut off from the only family he has left, with the knowledge that it's his own fault, his own choices, his own betrayal that got him here. A hundred years until he sees the others, and he will never see Andy again.</p><p>God. Andy. He is so, so, desperately grateful that he didn't shoot her somewhere vital. He could have killed her, taken away what already too little time she has left now. He almost had.</p><p>(He knew that it was a possibility, the regaining of mortality. He never thought that he would see it happen, not like that. Though, he's really not sure what else he expected, except maybe that he not find out because he <em>shot her</em>.)</p><p>He was, is, so unbelievably tired. It's no excuse for what he's done, and anyway, Andy was right. They'd both been doing a shitty job of living. Maybe if he tried doing it right, doing <em>better</em>, then it might start to feel more worth it. Maybe he'll be less tired. He has to at least try, because he never, ever wants Nile to feel this jaded, this hopeless. Never wants her to want nothing more than it all to end. Maybe if he can figure it out, she won't ever have to.</p><p>(Maybe if he does this, when Andy dies, she won't go with her last impression of him being a selfish, traitorous, coward. Maybe this will help Joe and Nicky trust him again just a little quicker when his hundred years are up and they come back for him. He doesn't know, but whatever happens, he thinks that this will be worth it, anyway.)</p><p>(Whatever happens, even if the others hate him for the rest of their too-long lives, he knows he will never pull that kind of shit again. He will never again allow himself to fall so far that he will betray the only people he has left. This is a promise that he makes to himself every day, every hour, every <em>breath</em>. Never again.)</p><p>It's this thought that keeps Booker going, through all those six months. Do <em>better</em>. <em>Be</em> better. Start by doing something good.</p><p>(He doesn't think that Andy could let herself search for Quynh again, let herself hope that even if she can be found after all this time, she will ever have her mind. He's pretty sure that she's terrified that, even if Quynh can be found and has held on to even a semblance of rationality, she will hate Andy, blame her for what happened to her, for not finding her sooner. That isn't Andy's fault. They all have the things in their past they can't bear to face. Booker will do this for her, so she doesn't have to.)</p><p>Given what Nile saw in her dream, Booker doubts that Quynh has retained much, if any, of her sanity. Maybe it's a fool's errand for him to try to help her get it back, he doesn't know.</p><p>(It's less of a maybe, more of an almost definitely. He still has to try.)</p><p>He spends six months searching the ocean obsessively, devouring every book, article, video, and documentary he can find on psychology, trauma, PTSD and studying more history than he ever has, so he can at least help her start to catch up, maybe even to heal. And finally, it pays off.</p><p>The boat that Booker is using right now, used to belong to a fisherman, the kind who fished whales and sharks and also had a side gig in occasional human trafficking. He's now dead in a ditch outside of Portsmouth.</p><p>Booker thinks that there might be a good kind of irony that he's using the man's boat to save someone from the sea. When he gets Qynh back to shore, he thinks he'll donate it to some organization that's working to conserve ocean life. It's been used for enough shitty things.</p><p>There's nothing special about the day, no storm, looming or otherwise, no spectacular display of sunlight, or even any particularly interesting clouds. It's mostly just kind of grey, but Booker has learned over the years that none of that matters, things will happen when they happen, regardless of what the sky is doing.</p><p>He still thinks that <em>something</em> might have bothered to indicate that this day, something important is happening, but maybe finding Quynh after five hundred years is dramatic enough on its own.</p><p>There is no one here to help him. He can't risk anyone else discovering their secret because of him, so when the sonar picks up a hunk of metal in the shape of a coffin, Booker drops anchor, puts on a diving suit, secures his line to the boat, and takes the crowbar he will use to free Quynh down himself. He will be leaving the box where it is.</p><p>(Now that he thinks about it, it's probably a really good thing that there is no storm to dislodge the boat.)</p><p>He swims down, down, down, light fading into nothing, water pressing in on him. Booker's headlight flickers on and he continues his descent. It's not the first time he's done this in his search. It is the last.</p><p>Booker hears Quynh before he sees her, a dull, barely audible thumping, and the edges of screams that almost seem like they belong in a dream, except for how horribly real this all is. The sounds are cut off before Booker reaches her.</p><p>He's seen horrible things in his over two centuries-long life. Atrocities he still has nightmares about. He's heard stories of still more, from the others, including what the witch hunters had done to Quynh, and then to Andy herself.</p><p>None of this prepares him. Her eyes are open, mouth frozen with her (hundredth, thousandth, millionth, billionth) dying scream, thrown into grotesque relief by the headlight. Booker can see the blood from her battered hands and knees drifting in the water. This woman has been here, in this metal coffin, suffering and dying and waking only to suffer and die again for five hundred years. Booker tears his eyes away from her agonized face before he throws up into his helmet and sets about prying the box open.</p><p>It takes time, the metal long since crusted over with algae and barnacles, but Booker manages to pry it open before he runs out of air. Quynh wakes thrice more, thumping and screaming each time. Booker doesn't think that she notices that he's there at all.</p><p>It's just after she goes silent for the third time that the metal gives way with an agonizing shriek. Good. Booker will have time to get her to the surface without her thrashing around in a panic. That wouldn't have ended well for either of them.</p><p>Booker catches Quynh under her arms and propels them to the surface, kicking off of that damned metal box. Having seen it, he's glad that he'd already decided that he wasn't going to bother hauling it up along with Quynh. It has no place but down here, buried by water, sand, and time.</p><p>He's barely managed to get them onto the boat when she woke, thrashing and gulping in air. Quynh's not registering her surroundings, doesn't even seem to realize that she's free. Booker hits her with enough tranqs to knock out a small bear, then hauls her into the cabin and wraps her in a blanket. She won't be waking up again any time soon, but this is a longer, kinder, sleep than she's had in a long, long time. Booker wants to get her far away from the ocean before he lets her wake up. Hopefully, that will help her realize that she's not drowning anymore.</p><p>When they dock, he carries Quynh from the boat to his car, and gives her another dose of tranquilizers.</p><p>He'll donate the boat online in a few days, it'll keep at the dock until then. For now, he drives to the small house, a cabin really, in the middle of nowhere (very far inland) he'd bought with money he'd gotten off of the dead boat owner.</p><p>He'll set up internet when they get there, the router's in the back seat, and then?</p><p>He doesn't know. He'll help Quynh as much as he is able to, cross whatever bridges he meets along the way when he gets to them.</p><p>(Booker doesn't think about what he'll do if Quynh can't be saved, if she never recovers at all, if the centuries have driven her mad and vengeful. If he entertains any of those options, he'll start to despair again, and he can't afford to do that.)</p><p>When he's done all he can for her, when he's sure (if he ever is) that she isn't an immediate danger to Andy and the others, innocent people, or to herself, he'll find Andy and the others and send her on her way to them with whatever she needs.</p><p>Then Booker will go back to that tiny seaside town and wait out the rest of his century in exile there, or close enough that he'll be able to get back fast if he needs to, and try to really live, instead of the shitty approximation he's been managing so far.</p><p>Now, Booker is driving as fast as he dares to, radio off, just listening to the sound of the car on the road and the rain that started to fall just as Portsmouth disappeared from his rear view mirror, sneaking glances over to his passenger every few minutes.</p><p>Be better. <em>Do</em> better. Do something <em>good</em>. He's going to damn well try.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is a standalone for now, I've got enough WIP's as it is (only one of which has been published so far) but I might add on to it later. </p><p>I'm @bookjoyworm over on tumblr if you want to come say hi :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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